Park City Film Series presents Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner as the next batch of Sandbox Awards are announced

Photo: 2026 Sandbox Fund Winners

PARK CITY, Utah — This weekend the Park City Film Series is showing the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award Winner in the U.S. Documentary category, Andre is an Idiot. This film tackles death from colon cancer in a humorous way that surprises and makes the audience laugh so much, it is hard to believe it is a documentary. The movie is scheduled for 7 p.m. on March 27 and 28 and 6 p.m. on March 29 at Jim Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library.

The Park City Film Series is Summit County’s only nonprofit art house cinema and has increased their offerings this year. Quite a few of their movies started at the Sundance Film Festival or other film festivals. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Sundance Institute and Sandbox Films just announced the names of the 16 projects and 47 filmmakers receiving support through the Sundance Institute | Sandbox Fund. The fund distributes grants to teams with films at any stage from development to post-production, creating opportunities to explore the intrinsic link between science and culture through innovative nonfiction storytelling. The Utah film The Lake, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Impact for Change, was developed with help from this fund.

Themes that have emerged within this year’s granting cohort include: memory’s power in shaping identity; how other species, scientists, storytellers, and traditional Indigenous knowledge holders navigate environmental transformation; and how technological acceleration is forcing reckonings with biological and ecological limits, redefining time and the human condition.

Supported projects have roots in 11 countries: Denmark, Guatemala, Iceland, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, North Macedonia, Portugal, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States, with 75% of projects directed by artists from communities that have been traditionally marginalized (e.g., artists who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women and/or gender nonconforming, and people with disabilities). This year’s submissions included 56% international submissions, with high interest from regions of the world with limited support for independent media. Half of the projects are from first- or second-time feature documentary directors, and five mark the director’s debut feature.

“We are thrilled to continue building on this program’s impactful legacy as we embark on our eighth year of championing essential nonfiction work revealing the profound connection between science and the human experience,” said Paola Mottura, Director of Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Fund.

“The filmmakers that we are able to support through this fund are all doing extraordinary work at the intersection of art and science. It is thrilling to experience their creativity and their unique takes on science storytelling. We are grateful for the Sundance Institute partnership, as it has introduced us to projects from all over the world, and proven to us that there is an appetite to tell these stories in the independent film community,” said Jessica Harrop, Executive Director of Sandbox Films.

The latest Sundance Institute | Sandbox Fund grantees, presented by production stage, are:

DEVELOPMENT

A Tale of Sea Dogs and Other Creatures (Kazakhstan)

A young Kazakh scientist fighting to save the Caspian seal from extinction must embrace the ancient mythic world of the sea to succeed, a choice that comes at an unbearable physical cost.

As Mine Exactly (U.K.)

A mother and son revisit the medical emergency that reshaped their lives and the remarkable fragments that remain of that time.

The Elephant in the Room (U.S.A.)

An all-archival adventure documentary that explores the creation of the American Museum of Natural History. Told through the interconnected stories of its extraordinary artifacts, the museum reveals a deep human desire to freeze time, amass treasures, and understand our place in the world.

The Pulse of the Volcanoes (Guatemala)

Guatemala is a restless land crossed by 37 volcanoes that have been eternal witnesses to tragedies, wars, and rebellions. Are these mountains of fire the voice of a wounded land, or the guardians of a history still seeking justice?

What You Remember (North Macedonia, U.K.)

How do we remember the past when our history has been faked? A political vision to rebuild a capital on the foundations of an unfinished city erased a collective memory, casting a dark shadow over Skopje’s future identity.

PRODUCTION

Chorwet (The Rhino Friend) working title (Kenya)

Zacharia Mutai balances fatherhood with his bond to the last two northern white rhinos, revealing a tender, deeply human view of care, loss, and endurance on the front lines of a crucial mission that might be the species’ final stand.

Father Figures (U.S.A.)

When a retired theater director begins creating internet videos featuring intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist dummies, his daughter attempts to repair their relationship by exploring the psychological depths and possibilities of his strange new hobby.

Lorehole (U.S.A.)

A film exploring the lifeways along the largely underground Amargosa River, which surfaces at the Borehole, a hot spring created by an environmental disaster and now the center of a rural community and a place of healing on the internal fringes of the American West. Narrated by Claire Vaye Watkins.

Metropolis (U.S.A., India)

In New York City, a multiethnic team of scientists and researchers chases, studies, and combats mosquitoes to protect the city’s population from the deadly viruses these tiny insects carry.

Sweet Mystery of Life (U.S.A.)

In a dreamlike 1950s town square built inside a warehouse, we will investigate our memory care crisis, the healing potential of filmmaking, and the fragility of reality itself by collaborating with three participants and their families to film scenes centered around their most important memories.

The Archipelago (U.K., Iceland)

On a remote Icelandic archipelago, a team of marine ornithologists studies elusive seabirds in global decline. On the same archipelago, two young women and the lost seabirds they rescue come of age.

The Mammoths that Escaped the Kingdom of Erlik Khan (Denmark, Macedonia, U.K., Portugal)

In the northernmost part of the Yakut Tundra, Vladik, a young Dolgan reindeer herder, is at a crossroads when he has to make a decision to either follow in his father’s ancestral footsteps or join the modern mammoth tusk hunters.

The Men in Gray (U.S.A.)

A 1970s children’s fantasy novel in which the time-thieving Men in Gray infiltrate an imaginary city serves as the point of departure for a documentary that explores our relationship with time in an era when it is accelerated, fragmented, and commodified as never before.

POST-PRODUCTION

Finding Your Laughter (U.S.A.)

Chicago comedian Arlieta Hall turns to her greatest tools, stand-up comedy and improvisation, to navigate the heartbreak and humanity of caring for her father, who is living with Alzheimer’s disease.

River of Grass (U.S.A)

An ode to the Florida Everglades, told through the prescient writings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and those who today call the region home.

The Tallest Dwarf (U.S.A.)

When a filmmaker with a rare form of dwarfism seeks out people with bodies like hers, she enters a community in flux. She joins forces with little people artists to trace a troubled history of being put on display. Together, they forge a vision of disabled beauty and power.

Founded in 2020, Sandbox Films’ slate of critically acclaimed films includes Oscar-nominated Fire Of Love; Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize winners All Light, Everywhere and Nocturnes; Werner Herzog’s Fireball, Penny Lane’s Confessions Of A Good Samaritan and Emmy-winning Fathom; André Is An Idiot, winner of the 2025 US Documentary Audience Award and Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at Sundance Film Festival and most recently The Lake, winner of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Impact for Change. Sandbox Films’ documentaries have found extensive audiences through top streaming and distribution partners, including Apple TV+, Hulu, National Geographic Documentary Films, NEON, and Netflix, as well as in movie theaters internationally.